Introduction:

Human activity has pushed the planet into an era of mass biodiversity loss. Expanding cities, deforestation, climate change, and industrial growth continue to fragment habitats and disrupt ecosystems. The built environment, often viewed as an ecological burden, is at the core of this crisis. But architecture also holds the potential to reverse it.

What if buildings were not just shelters for humans, but living frameworks that support multiple species? What if future cities could function as ecosystems, where flora, fauna, and humans coexist symbiotically?

This competition invites architects, students, designers, and visionaries to reimagine architecture’s role in shaping a biodiverse future through speculative and imaginative proposals.

Theme:
Architecture as Ecosystem — Designing for Biodiversity Futures

Participants are invited to speculate on a future where architecture and ecosystems are inseparable. The challenge is to design spaces, structures, or environments that restore, support, and expand biodiversity, redefining the relationship between humans and nature.

Design Challenge:
Propose an architectural vision for a future where biodiversity thrives alongside human existence. Projects may be buildings, urban interventions, or speculative ecosystems that explore multispecies cohabitation.

Guiding questions:

• How can architecture become an agent of ecological regeneration?

• How might built forms integrate with natural cycles like migration, pollination, or water filtration?

• What would a multispecies city or habitat look like in a biodiverse future?

• Could architecture act as a living, adaptive organism?

Context:

Participants may select from the following speculative scenarios or propose their own:

• The Vertical Wilderness (Urban Megacities) – Skyscrapers as forests, rooftops as habitats, facades as pollinator fields.

• The Rewilded Ruins (Post-Anthropocene Landscapes) – Abandoned human cities transformed into biodiversity hubs.

• The Floating Biome (Rising Seas) – Amphibious, floating structures that double as marine ecosystems.

• The Desert Bloom (Arid Futures) – Architectural systems seeding biodiversity in barren deserts.

• The Sky Gardens (Aerial Futures) – Suspended habitats where humans, birds, and insects coexist.

• The Underground Sanctuary (Subterranean Futures) – Subsurface ecosystems cohabited by fungi, roots, insects, and humans.

Aim:
The competition seeks to push architectural imagination beyond human-centered design, exploring futures where architecture becomes symbiotic, regenerative, and ecologically alive. The goal is to inspire new design languages that contribute to biodiversity resilience, shifting from an anthropocentric to a symbiocentric worldview.